


Better Today

by K9Lasko



Category: NCIS
Genre: Drama, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Memorial Day, Sequel, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K9Lasko/pseuds/K9Lasko
Summary: Four years later, she runs into a familiar face.
Sequel to my other (very) short story, "A Mother's Duty."





	

**Author's Note:**

> "A Mother's Duty" can be found here... http://archiveofourown.org/works/414965

It’s been four years. Four years of missing him, and of thinking he’s just a phone call away, but he’s not. He won’t be; she knows this. She figures she ought to have internalized it by now, but instinct and habit are funny things. They don’t reprogram that easy, and sometimes, she feels like she could be taken by fantasy. A fantasy that suggests that this reality never existed.

 

She still wakes up and remembers something funny he once said, or something she knows he’d like to hear. Good news about a family member or close friend. A joke or a story or just a general gripe about something trivial.

 

The flags flutter. Dozens and dozens of them. Hundreds maybe. All of them stuck into the earth. Fresh flowers next to some of them, but there aren’t nearly enough. Most of them are just lonely. Lonely graves, stark white headstones. He’s under the one she stands in front of. Under there, somewhere. And the flags — all of them fresh, handsome. Red, white, and blue. Stars and stripes. Funny how she sees things through this sharp lens of loss — barely even dulled.

 

Maybe it’ll take ten years. Twenty years. Forever.

 

This cemetery seems to stretch on for miles. She hates it, and she loves it. It’s both beautiful and ugly. Peaceful. If there’s any place one must stop and rest forever, this isn’t bad.

 

Someone asked her once, at the two year mark, when she would “move on.” Move on? _Move on_ from where. _Move on_ to where? _Move on_ for what? The child she’d raised, the child she led into this world, the one she thought about every day for the past twenty-eight years, the one she said goodbye to with a smile and a proud heart… he was gone, just like that. What was left after such a stunning blow? She misses him. She more than misses him. Some days, she can’t take it. 

 

“Better today,” someone suddenly says from behind her. “Clear skies. No rain.” She startles, turns her head, and finds herself looking into the face of someone familiar. She has no words, at first. “Sorry if I scared you,” he says quickly. “I saw you, and I just really wanted to say ‘hi.’”

 

She runs a quick hand over her face; her embarrassment is innate, preprogrammed. She hates to show her tears, even though today’s are slow and already drying against her cheeks. Quickly, she says, “Agent DiNozzo.” She remembers his name. Would be hard to forget. This man stuck by her side through the investigation, beginning to end. He kept an eye on her, even when she didn’t want him to. He’d given her more support than her husband, in a way, but that’s something she kept only for herself. People had a hard time understanding her grief, and her attachment to this NCIS agent, this man who was not married, raised some eyebrows. _Fuck them._ She had needed a friend, and Agent DiNozzo, or just “Tony” as he said he preferred to be called, had been as politely friendly as she needed him to be.

 

“So… Hi.” He just smiles. He has a sweet smile that reminds her of her son. She wants to reach out and embrace him, but she doesn’t. “I, um…” he tries to fill the silence.

 

“Been awhile,” she helps him out. “Why are you here?”

 

He shrugs, and he looks out across the green lawn and the rows and rows of white headstones, and the little flags, still fluttering, still handsome and proud. It is a beautiful day, so different from that other day, in the cold, pounding rain. She watches the side of his face, the lines that are dug deep there, familiar yet new. He’s squinting in the sun. He’s gotten older, she knows. Her son would have been older, too, if he were still alive.

 

“Sometimes,” he finally says, “I end up here. To think, pay my respects…” Tony looks at her. He looks honest when he admits, “Sometimes I think about you.”

 

Her eyebrows pull together. “Tony…”

 

And he shakes his head. “ _Not_ inappropriate or anything. I just keep seeing you, versions of you, over and over again, in the people who lose someone. People I meet through work. Parents who lose children. And I guess it just makes me think.” He pauses. “I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable.”

 

“No.” She reaches and puts a hand on his chest, and she smiles at him. It’s genuine, her smile. “Not at all. You surprised me, that’s all.”

 

He nods. He’s staring at something in the distance again. He looks troubled, and that realization, that her former pillar of strength might not be completely strong himself, bothers her.

 

She asks, “Are you okay?”

 

“I should be asking you that,” he answers quickly.

 

“Oh, honey. I’ve had my grief. It’s constant, that’s true. But I don’t think I could ever thank you enough for your help.”

 

“I didn’t do anything. My boss handled most of it.”

 

“While I also appreciate everything Agent Gibbs did for me and my husband and Chase…” she stops. Saying his name is hard sometimes, but every time she does say it, it gets easier. That’s what she promises herself. Someday she’ll be able to say it with only love, not sadness. She sighs. “Tony, you did so much by just being you.”

 

He gives her a look, as if she’s said something crazy. Something about that touches her. This child — yes, this forty-year-old son of somebody — doesn’t know much about himself. “No,” he says. “I’m so sorry, for what happened.”

 

“Don’t be sorry.” In truth, she hates that platitude. “You know, that afternoon, I told Gibbs that I thought nobody cared. And he said that I just had to find the right people.” She smiles and follows his gaze, out into the beautiful nowhere. “He was right. My son,” she looks directly at Tony now, and he looks directly at her. “He was so proud of what he was doing. What he did, everything was his choice. His decision. So yes, I can stand here every year and I can weep, because I lost my baby boy. But I can’t say he didn’t die without love of what he thought he was achieving.”

 

“He was a good man. Principled. Responsible. Brave. I serve to protect such men, and women, and I couldn’t be more proud to have the opportunity. I have Gibbs to thank for that.”

 

“And what about you?”

 

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

 

“You are a good man,” she repeats back at him, “Principled. Responsible. Brave.”

 

“I just do my job, ma’am,” he answers, respectfully. “Nothing remarkable about that. Though it’s kind of you to say such nice things about me.”

 

She shakes her head. She should get going, she should get back to her life. Her husband is probably waiting. They deal with the grief in different ways. She visits the grave, and he visits the things they used to love. But a man can only fish for so long. That’s why she knows he’s home, her husband, the man she fell in love with, the father of her son. He’s probably home and waiting for her. She faces Tony now, she needs him to see something. “You look unhappy.”

 

He opens his mouth. Shuts it. He knows what she says is true. He is unhappy, but he can’t remember when it started. It’s a restlessness in him. So he lies, “I’m figuring it out, Ms. Carlisle. Please trust me, I am.”

 


End file.
